


When The Working Day Is Done

by glitteratiglue



Series: TNG '80s [3]
Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Exposition, Female Friendship, Gen, Shore Leave, Women Being Awesome, Women who love plants
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-09
Updated: 2015-04-09
Packaged: 2018-03-22 01:50:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3710374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glitteratiglue/pseuds/glitteratiglue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shore leave, healing and the unexpected joy of friendship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When The Working Day Is Done

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cosmic_llin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmic_llin/gifts).



> \- because she got excited about the idea and didn't tell me I was insane for wanting to do it.
> 
> Time period - series 4, _Family_.

“I come home in the morning light  
My mother says when you gonna live your life right  
Oh mother dear we're not the fortunate ones  
And girls they want to have fun  
Oh girls just want to have fun.”

_**Girls Just Want To Have Fun – Cyndi Lauper**_

 

As soon as they get into the hotel suite, Deanna's suitcase bursts open, showering its colourful contents all over the floor.

The counselor scowls. “I knew I shouldn't have packed those extra dresses. This is what happens when I take packing advice from my mother.”

“You look as though you're moving to Risa, not visiting for a week.” Beverly laughs, shaking her head as she lugs her own case into the adjoining bedroom.

Keiko examines her own small case anxiously. A firm believer in packing light, she only brought the essentials: sun visor, a couple of swimsuits, and interchangeable light outfits for day and evening, but it seems as though the others have brought enough possessions for a month.

Finding a stray sandal on the floor, Keiko passes it to Deanna, and the counselor smiles kindly at her.

“Thanks, Keiko.” Deanna jams the rest of her things haphazardly into the case and hauls it onto the nearest bed. “Right, that'll do. Now let's go and have a drink.”

“Give me a minute to unpack,” Beverly calls from the next room, and Keiko can see through the open door that she's already sorting her clothes into neat, methodical piles and separating them into the drawers provided.

With little to unpack, Keiko picks up her case and heads for her own bedroom to put it away. She happily notes that the room is a pleasant size and is simply, but comfortably furnished with neutral linens and lots of mirrors – she hadn't expected Risian decor to be so restrained.

"Ooh, it's nice in here! I think the light in your room is better." Hearing the familiar voice, Keiko turns to find Deanna already sitting on the edge of her bed – apparently she has the ability to enter a room silently, like a stealthy Betazoid ninja – looking as though she belongs there.

“It's lovely to be here,” says Deanna, smoothing down her flimsy sundress that's delightfully frivolous and something she would never dare wear on board ship. “I can't remember the last time I took a proper vacation.” Looking over at Keiko, she spots her standing by an armchair, twisting the strap of her case round her fingers and looking ill at ease.

“Keiko?” Deanna asks. “What's the matter? We're on vacation, girls only. You could at least _try_ to look happy.” Her smile is knowing, and Keiko remembers, with a jolt in her stomach, that's she talking to an empath.

“Sorry, it's not you, I just,” – Keiko drops her voice, sinks into the nearest chair – “I've never been very good at enjoying vacations. We used to spend every summer in the Ryukyu Islands with my cousins, and everyone used to love it, except me. I just wanted to sit inside and read.”

The counselor says nothing at first, but shoots her a sympathetic look that seems borne of experience.

“You've met my mother, right?” Deanna leans forward, wraps her arms around her knees.

Relaxing slightly, Keiko replies, “I have. She's – fun.”

“That's one way of putting it. I used to hate our vacations, too; my mother felt the need for a relentless level of entertainment and distractions at every turn. There was no space to just _be.”_

“That's how I felt."

Beverly comes in, brandishing a PADD, and says, excitedly, “Look at this! The hologuide says that there are several botanical gardens on Risa, and that the planet boasts a wide variety of wild plant life.” She turns to Keiko with a wink. “Couldn't hurt, right?”

Deanna groans, flops forward to bury her face in the pillow.

When Keiko was asked to come along, she was going to say no, because she doesn't do vacations, then she remembered – being so afraid she thought her bones would burst from her skin, the way she tried to comfort the crying children in the schoolroom while they all waited for the inevitability of the Borg overcoming their defences, the fear that Deanna and Beverly would have had to keep inside so they could do their jobs – and she said _yes._

*

 

“I wonder how I've already got to the stage in my life where my mother's trying to marry me off.” Deanna drains the rest of her Samarian sunset in one swallow and signals to the waiter for another. "I  _like_  my life the way it is," she adds indignantly, "and it's hard to balance a marriage with a Starfleet career."

"I think my mother just thinks I'll never meet somebody, so she's given up asking," says Keiko, a wry smile on her face that belies the bitterness of her words. "The way I see it, if and when you meet someone who's right, then marry. But it should be up to you."

“It's such an outdated attitude,” agrees Beverly, her voice a little too loud and her cheeks pink from all the drinks they've had. “It's funny, when I married Jack, Felisa wasn't keen at all. She grew to love him in the end, of course, but she was furious when I first said I was going to marry him. She said we were too young, we hadn't thought it through, that  –”

“And had you thought it through?” interjects Deanna.

“Of course not! We were young, foolish idiots and by all accounts it shouldn't have worked.” Beverly pauses, sips at her cocktail. “But it did. At least until –“

Maybe it's the way Beverly pauses, and all the things she doesn't say after that, but Keiko finds herself admitting, in uncharacteristic fashion, “Sometimes I get so tired of being single." She swallows, aware of how pathetic that sounds, and hastily qualifies with, "Look, It's not like I meet someone and expect that we're going to immediately marry and have twelve kids. My expectations aren't unrealistic – even something a little casual and fun would be nice, for a change. But all my dates lately have been disastrous.”

“I hear that.” Deanna nods, shudders as if she's recalling some unpleasant memory.

“One of the junior technicians in the plant biology lab asked me out just last week," Keiko explains, running a finger around the rim of her glass. "He seemed pleasant enough when he asked me, but when we went out, it was unbelievably dull. All he wanted to talk about were the latest developments in aquaculture.”

“My last disaster was a junior lieutenant from engineering.” Deanna smirks. “We had a great night, but then the next morning his mother was visiting the ship, and he asked if I wanted to meet her. I've never gotten dressed so quickly in all my life.”

“Risa is _exactly_ the place to be single, Keiko,” Beverly says with a wicked grin. “It's like window-shopping. Lots of gorgeous men and women everywhere” – she pauses, shooting an admiring glance at their very young and scantily-clad waiter – “and you can look...and even partake, if you wish.” She swiftly adds, “I mean, not that I've ever done that. Jack and I got together in medical school, and then there was Wesley. I haven't really had the time.”

“I did it once, you know,” Deanna says casually, peering at the cocktail menu. “When Will left me on Risa all that time ago, I wasn't about to sit around and mope. _Jamaharon_ is definitely something to be tried – it was a very pleasant weekend. I think she was called Arandis.”

Keiko coughs as her drink goes down the wrong way, reddening. “To be honest, I'm happy enough with the standard aspects of a vacation.”

“Agreed. No distractions this week, ladies. This is our time.” Beverly holds up her glass, clinks it against Keiko's, and Deanna joins in with a hearty laugh. “Cheers.”

Sometime after midnight, when she can't stop smiling, and the three of them are swapping ship's gossip and drinking something pink served in a tall glass with an umbrella, Keiko thinks that maybe she can _decide_ to enjoy herself on this trip.

*****

 

The next afternoon, after a brisk walk in one of the nearby parks, Keiko finds Deanna by the pool engrossed in a Betazoid philosophy text, alongside an obviously hungover and possibly comatose Beverly wearing an eye mask.

“ _Spiritual Metaphysics_ by Verin Laxx,” Keiko reads from the cover. “A bit of light reading?”

Deanna lowers the book and grins. “Strange as it sounds, this is my relaxing vacation reading. On the _Enterprise_ , there's usually too much going on for me to concentrate on anything more than romance holonovels.”

Keiko sits down on the edge of the sunlounger and kicks off her sandals. “Because you're an empath?”

Shifting to make space for Keiko, Deanna considers. “It's partly that, and partly my patients. Their problems end up going round in my head. Being responsible for everyone's mental health can be a little trying at times. Some days I look at my schedule and think it's a wonder I find time to sleep at all.” Brightening a little, she smiles, and it lights up her face. “It's not that I don't love my job, but sometimes it's just too much.”

“I often feel like that, too,” Keiko admits shyly. “It doesn't sound like much, but managing both the botany department and the plant biology lab is harder than it sounds. Being a civilian department, we're considered quite low in the pecking order; a lot of the staff I end up with only took the posts so they could get on the _Enterprise._ I feel like half my job consists of trying to convince Will Riker that our department is worthy of even the tiniest allocation of ship's resources.” She sighs - it's not that she's ungrateful, far from it, but it's rare she gets to air these grievances and there's something cathartic about getting the chance to do it.

“That sounds like being chief medical officer,” Beverly calls sleepily from the next bed over. “I always feel like I'm trying to convince the captain that we need more resources. I need more nurses, more biobeds, but I get told there isn't the space. Never mind that we have sixteen holodecks.”

“It's nice here, you know,” Keiko remarks, looking up at the purplish ochre of the sky. “Not at all what I expected. They're a little full-on, the Risians, I'll admit – I've been offered _jamaharon_ five times already today – but I like the pace of life here. Its quiet.”

“Did I ever tell you about the time Will asked the captain to bring him back a souvenir horga'hn?” Deanna's grin is mischievous, and Keiko is already laughing at the mere thought of it.

*

 

On the third day, Beverly suggests a picnic in one of the botanical gardens. After some exploring, they choose a spot near the beds of Risian orchids, their exotic scent heady in the air.

Deanna breathes in deeply, her eyes closing. “It's beautiful here.”

“Why do you think I like to work around plants? It's restorative for the soul.” Keiko unpacks the basket, passing around some interesting delicacies native to the planet; there's something that looks a bit like cheese, and some purplish bread, along with a salad of spiny greens.

“I should spend more time in the aboretum.” The counselor smiles genuinely.

They eat the picnic – the greens are an acquired taste, they all agree, though everything else is good – and then stretch out on the large blanket: Deanna to read, Beverly to knit, and Keiko to write. Keiko has brought one her favourite calligraphy pens and an old, worn, notebook; it's a hobby she's kept up since her days as a botany student. Recording her thoughts on a PADD just doesn't have the same meditative quality as forming letters with a pen.

“You handwrite so easily,” notes Deanna, looking up from the counseling manual she's absorbed in.

“Thank you." Keiko is looking down at the text she's written, appraising it. “I always wish I'd learned how to write kan'ji when I was a little girl. I speak fluent Japanese – my grandmother wouldn't have had it any other way – and I can read it pretty well but there's a part of the meaning that gets lost when you don't understand how those characters are formed."

“There is something lovely about real pages and ink, isn't there?” agrees Deanna, indicating the bound, cloth-covered book she's reading.

Beverly holds up her inexpertly-knitted beginnings of a scarf for their opinion; it's a little scruffy-looking, but not bad for homemade, as far as Keiko can see.

“What do you think?” she asks.

“It's nice, but why not just use the replicator?” Deanna's laugh is teasing.

“May I?” Keiko asks, and Beverly nods, passing the needles and wool over. “Look, you've done a purl stitch here.” She deftly pokes the needle in and out, quickly unraveling the offending stitches while the doctor watches, clearly impressed. “There! Fixed.”

Not holding much interest in knitting, Deanna has already returned to her novel, with one ear open to half-listen to the conversation.

“Thank you.” Beverly smiles, pleased. “My, you are a dark horse, Keiko Ishikawa.”

“Who are you knitting the scarf for?” asks Keiko. Beverly immediately flushes crimson and drops the stitch she's in the middle of.

“Captain Picard,” the counselor says from behind her book, ignoring the deadly glance the doctor gives her.

Beverly clears her throat and takes up the wool again, intent on the needles.

Keiko wants to smile, but she can't, when she thinks of the meaning behind the gift, the way she and the other civilians thought every hour would be their last while the ship was in peril and the officers rushed about, ashen-faced and sleep deprived, while the Borg toyed with them.

“Space does get cold,” says Keiko, as delicately as she can muster. “What a thoughtful gift for the captain.”

Later, in bed, Beverly remembers the nightmares they took this vacation to forget: a body taken apart and skin stitched to metal and circuits, and the man inside, who's been trying so desperately hard not to break ever since. The least she can do is knit him a horrible, lumpy scarf he'll probably never wear - but he will thank her awkwardly, and perhaps hold on it to it and let its softness comfort him through all the sleepless nights to come.

In the middle of the night, Beverly sits up in bed and gets out her knitting needles, resolving to finish the scarf before they return to the ship.

 

*

 

Beverly spends the day at the spa to recuperate from the heavy, alcoholic nights – Keiko and Deanna prefer the idea of visiting the pristine beaches of the Temtibi Lagoon, so they agree to meet in the evening. Deanna drags Keiko to one of the boutiques in the complex and manages to convince her to purchase something a little more daring than her usual swimwear, all the while teasing her companion by suggesting fringed and jewelled costumes that would be inappropriate even by Lwaxana's standards.

Eventually, it's a green one-piece; Keiko's favourite colour, in whisper-thin fabric that hugs her skin. It's not a wasted morning for Deanna, either, who finds several new, delightful garments for her ever-expanding wardrobe.

“What do you think?” asks Keiko, squinting against the sunlight as she pulls at her new swimsuit, admiring its green glimmer when she steps out beyond the shadow of their parasol. “It's a little gaudy, not really me, but –”

“Nonsense. You're stunning.” Deanna beams at her.

They lay their towels on the sand, and Deanna roots through her customary enormous bag to pull out yet another heavy psychology tome.

Keiko says, "More light reading?" – and this time, she regrets her flippancy – didn't her mother always tell her she was too direct with people? - because Deanna looks at her, and there's  _something._

"There's a long story behind it, if you want to hear." Deanna sets the book down.

"Go on."

"When I was at the academy, some of my less enlightened peers used to say that I had no business being there, that I was just some aristocrat playing at being a Starfleet officer. I wanted to prove them wrong so badly that I spent hours training out on the academy track so I could run faster, logging extra hours in the flight simulator. And I would go to the library and read and read, so there'd never be the possibility of not knowing a question in class when I was called on. It was pretty unsustainable, but I kept it up long enough to make the point that I wanted to be there for the same reasons as everyone else." As she finishes the tale, Deanna's eyes glint with triumph, showing an obvious competitive streak Keiko never knew she had.

"Was it hard, being around so many humans? I know our minds are..."

"Yes," Deanna answers honestly. "But what I used to find, was that when I would closet myself in the library and read whatever book it was we were set that week – subspace mechanics, or practical aeronautics, maybe – everything would fall away, and there'd be nothing but the words. Most of my fellow students used to loathe them – admittedly, some of them are a little dry – but there's something about the concentration required for an academic text that I still find incredibly relaxing, to this day. And it does have some professional benefits."

"I thought about going to the academy, but botany was what I wanted to do most of all, and science-track cadets can't choose their specialism for a few years."

"And you're on a starship anyway, doing what you want to do," Deanna notes. "Sometimes I think I'd like to do a few more Starfleet-type duties, rather than just my psychology role, as much as I love it. There's advising the captain, of course, but it's not the same. I feel like some of my skills are getting rusty."

"I'm sure you could do anything you wanted, Deanna, if you put your mind to it," says Keiko, and she means every word.

"We _all_ could." Deanna smiles, turns back to her book.

Keiko lets her eyes close, turning her face to the warm sun, but relaxation seems hard to come by today. She shifts on the towel, first one way, then the other; the notebook and holonovels she brought with her are discarded quickly.

After a few minutes, Deanna snaps her book shut. “You've got a secret, Keiko.”

“What? Of course I don't,” says Keiko, but the words come out too quickly, and she looks away too late, and it's  _Deanna_ , so of course she knows already, anyway.

“You've been staring out at the water and sighing for about the past twenty minutes. Nobody loves the lagoon _that_ much.”

“Oh come off it, Deanna – you're just reading my impressions.”

The counselor smiles knowingly, not bothering to deny it. “I'm not exactly trying to – you're throwing them out at me. Come on. Who is he?”

“Nobody, really.” Keiko adjusts her sarong. “It's just, well...Miles did ask me out.”

Deanna's eyes widen. “As in Miles O'Brien?”

“Yeah. I turned him down.” There's a wistfulness in Keiko's quiet sigh, and Deanna is watching her carefully when she looks up again.

“He's just not my type. He seems like a nice guy, but he makes too many jokes, jokes I don't even understand. It makes me nervous.”

“Did it ever occur to you that he might be making jokes to cover up the fact that he's the one who's nervous?”

Keiko considers, a small smile forming on her lips. “I guess there's only one way to find out. How about you, Deanna? Anyone you're interested in at the minute?”

“If there was, it would just be something casual. I've had enough of complicated.”

Keiko gives her a shrewd look. “'Complicated' being a certain – first officer?”

Deanna laughs, playing with the straw in her drink. “Honestly? Will and I will probably end up together some day. But he's got a lot of growing up to do first. I'm not going to wait around; it could be never.”

Keiko says nothing, and Deanna looks away and thinks about an invitation to Angel Falls that she turned down, from a man who never takes his own advice but can just about listen to hers. There was horror in Will's eyes, and she couldn't be the one to deal with it, not this time – it was too close, too raw, like looking through the other side of a mirror  – so she ran; she was sure he'd find other comforts in her stead. In the aftermath, she thought she would snap under the weight of the crew's terror, and there were back-to-back counseling appointments and she _couldn't_ even cry, and was it so terrible to want to put herself first for a change? So she booked a vacation and she smiled and laughed, and it was simple.

It's easy enough to hide the bruises on your heart when you know how.

*

 

On the final day, Keiko and Beverly go for a hike in the mountains, tempted by the hologuide's description of unparalleled views over Suraya Bay for those that dare to scale the summit. Deanna claims to still feel the worse for wear after too many chocolate passion punches the previous night, and opts to spend the day by the pool with a book on Jungian archetypes (privately, Beverly thinks Deanna's lack of interest in botany had a lot more to do with her turning it down than a hangover).

Three-quarters of the way up, they stop for a drink of water; Keiko's shirt and loose pants are stuck to her skin with sweat, and Beverly is red with the heat of the jungle, but she's no less exuberant for it.

“Phew.” Beverly finds a clip in her pocket and scrapes her damp hair into the barrette, piling it up on her head and out of the way. “That's better. This heat is pretty close. You'd think that if the Risians can control their weather, they wouldn't make it so damn humid.”

“I've had worse,” says Keiko, pouring some water into her hands and using it to splash her face. “I spent a semester on Vulcan studying desert plants, and the heat was unrelenting.”

She gulps back some more water, remembering the scorching, arid planet where her mouth was constantly dry and her lips cracked even by the second day. Spending just a short time in the unforgiving heat of a Vulcan summer had led Keiko to appreciate the challenges of cultivating plant life on a planet where water was precious; it had taught her how to be inventive when it came to growing plants in entirely unsuited environments. If anyone said a plant wouldn't grow – that the soil was the wrong type, or lacking in nutrients, that there was insufficient light, whatever – Keiko Ishikawa would make it grow; she'd carried that thought with her throughout her entire career, and whether it was hubris or confidence, it had worked.

Beverly catches Keiko smiling privately to herself, and asks, “What's funny?”

“Just something one of my professors said. She used to say that botany was two parts tenacity, one part lunacy."

Mouthing the words, Beverly says, "I like that. I'm sure you could apply it to all scientists; certainly to me."

They finish their water and resume their steady pace uphill, until Beverly's eye is caught by a bright red plant with flat, waxy leaves.

“A bromeliad,” murmurs Keiko, stopping at Beverly's side to look at the specimen. “Perfectly shaped for collecting rainwater. I've never seen one in that colour; it's so vivid.”

“A beauty, aren't you?” Beverly is speaking to the plant as she crouches down, using the soft tone of a scientist. “Mind if I  –?” She cuts away a small piece of leaf, depositing it in a waiting vial.

“You brought sample containers?” Keiko smiles, amused. “And I thought _I_ was the plant enthusiast.”

“It was my grandmother, actually.” The doctor smiles, holding the vial up to admire the spidery veins crisscrossing the leaf's surface.

“She was a gardener?”

“She was a healer. My parents died when I was young, so Felisa brought me up. She believed in the more practical applications of medicine, using herbs and tinctures – that kind of thing. We were living on Arvada III at the time. It was one of the earlier terraforming projects, a gas giant magically turned into a habitable Class-M world.”

“Amazing,” Keiko can't stop herself from saying in wonder, but regrets it when a shadow falls over Beverly's face, and the lines at the corners of her mouth tighten.

“It was,” she says quietly. “But there were problems, problems that the colonists weren't informed of until it was too late. Terraforming wasn't as advanced as it is now, and there were a lot of geological instabilities. One day, there was an earthquake that devastated the most densely populated area of the planet, which also happened to be the fertile land where they grew crops for the entire colony. Thousands died, and many more were left injured. In the aftermath, there weren't enough doctors, and my grandmother dedicated herself to helping the sick and infirm. I worked as her assistant."

“You must have had to grow up fast,” murmurs Keiko. “We're used to earthquakes in Japan, but there have been safety protocols for centuries. I can't imagine what that would be like. Was that why you wanted to be a doctor?”

Beverly nods, and her face softens; it's obviously a memory she's long made peace with.

“I saw the way she helped people. Felisa taught me to make a poultice of herbs to prevent wound infections and mix a draught that would bring down even the highest fevers.” Beverly stows the vial in her pack, tucks a strand of red hair behind her ear that has fallen into her eyes. “Of course, I went on to study conventional medicine, but I've never forgotten her remedies.”

"She sounds like a pretty extraordinary woman."

"She is," agrees Beverly, hoisting her pack higher on her shoulders. "I should get back to Caldos to see her more often, really." A pause, and then, “You know, I'm doing some research on the properties of bromeliad plants; the data I've gathered so far indicates they might be useful in treating certain strains of flu. In fact, I've been meaning to speak to you about it.”

“Well, when we get back, why don't you show me your data?" Keiko suggests, bending down to re-lace her boots. "I did a project in graduate school about medical applications of fungi – not exactly the same, but there are some similarities.”

“Sounds great. If you come to my office in sickbay, I've taught my replicator to make a mean lemon tea. It's not quite a Samarian sunset, but it'll do.”

Keiko suddenly stops, transfixed by something on the ground, and Beverly follows her gaze. They watch a small bug larvae scuttle along in the dirt, then stop still. Before their eyes, its body turns translucent, wings erupting from its back, forming the scales of a large beetle.

“Instantaneous metamorphosis.” Beverly's eyes are full of wonder. “I've only seen simulations.” Her hand twitches towards her pack, where she happens to have an insect container, but something stops her.

“Somehow it doesn't feel right to capture this one,” Keiko suggests, echoing Beverly's thoughts, and they watch the fledgling creature stretch its bedraggled wings and crawl into the trees to await the drying of its wings and its first flight.

They return to pushing their way through the undergrowth; up here, the path is dense and difficult to tread, and more than once, they put out hands or arms to stop themselves falling.

“It's only a little further to the top,” Keiko calls from ahead of her, her voice steady and determined.

“It's going to be worth it.” Beverly grits her teeth and kicks a log out of the way with her boot, trying not to pant in the sticky closeness of the air.

As they burst through the canopy of foliage to the summit, Keiko reaches out a hand, pulling Beverly up on to the ridge, light surging all around them, and there's blue and green and sea and sky as far as the eye can see.

Putting up a hand to shield her eyes from the glare, Beverly stares, taking it all in, captivated by the very real beauty of this unnatural and augmented world.

Keiko looks out at the horizon, thinks of intense discussions of plant genera with Beverly, of Deanna's laughter while she tries to explain space-and-time constructs of metaphysics to her, of warm nights and artificially-coloured drinks and gossip, and feels perfectly alive.

**Author's Note:**

> I make no apologies for any dodgy science you may find here.


End file.
